Only Skin Deep

"Beauty is only skin deep," will forever remind me of my friend Emily from high school. My french teacher quoted it to us. Emily paused for a minute, looked up, and asked, in all seriousness, "How deep is skin?" It made us all laugh, and my teacher looked at her askance.

So I was looking through old pictures today, and I noticed how my face has changed. I'm not entirely sure why. Change of weight, getting older, whatever. But I looked and I thought, "Wow, my skin looked great, and look at that," blah, blah, blah. And I know at the time I wasn't any more comfortable with my appearance than I am now, which is a frequent discussion with SB. I have wished before that I could somehow see myself through his eyes. Or anyone's eyes, for that matter. Just to see what I look like to everyone else.

Now this is not to say that I am all that obsessed with my appearance or that I really think it matters all that much. I know, I know, studies show that more attractive people do better in life, but I think there is really a limit to that. Because think about it. If someone is super-attractive, are people going to want to be around them? Are less attractive people going to feel anything but jealousy for the more attractive?

All of this made me think, though, not about my own insecurities. Because let's face it. Been there, done that. It bores me now. Instead I started to think about the role and history of beauty in our society. The concept of beauty has changed so much over the past centuries. Beauty once was more a symbol of wealth. Bigger was better because it meant you could afford not to work. Now beauty has been tied into cultural hegemony. As women have gained power, the concept of beauty has gotten smaller for them. As if society is telling women that they must pay for their increased power by taking up less space. The opposite is true for men.

So how much of beauty is anything beyond societal concepts? How much do we read into beauty signs of other things? That man can't be evil; he's too pretty. That woman must be dumb because of how she looks. Is beauty anything beyond a way to sort the world? To pretend like we know something about people we have no contact with?